I was going to create a poll for this, but then I thought - hey! a favorite or recommended CPU manufacturer may vary widely depending on the intended application. So, instead of me creating countless permutations and combinations, I'll just list some options and let it go from there.

For the CPU manufacturer itself - I am only aware of three companies that currently make x86 CPUs - Intel, AMD, and VIA.

multimedia intensive applications
any of the above from AMD or Intel Core 2

embedded
ARM / PowerPC / VIA NANO / Intel Atom

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About $400. The processors, if you want any reasonable speed, are about $1K each, and you should have two of course (for eight cores total). If you need any more power you really should be running on a cluster.

Workstations traditionally have been used for applications where you can't have an error, so not using ECC memory is just not a good idea. The registration comes in for the large amounts of memory some of those applications they consume. They really are servers with one or more good video cards.

If you don't meet those requirements, I'd call it a desktop. But that's just me. I remember back in the old days when people were running MS-DOS with 640K memory. I had a Sun (with a 68020!) and 4MB memory. It was considered a monster then. Today's workstations should count as such too.

For servers, I won't touch an Intel setup. Opteron all the way, especially the 3rd gen ones (K10/Barcelona, all the 4-digit model numbers). When it comes to hardware virtualisation and 64-bit support, Intel has dropped the ball too many times. Not to mention their prices are exhorbitant for quad-core setups, the memory requirements are ludicrous, and they have a habit of changing sockets/ram with minor cpu speed bumps.

The only good thing to say about Intel in the server room, IMO/IME, is that their chipsets tend to be rock-solid. But that's not enough for me to recommend them to the higher-ups.

You can't say unless you investigate it. It's easy to just say Intel or AMD based on past experience but past experience is no guarantee of future happiness. For a while Intel and AMD would leapfrog over each other in the gaming area. Intel seems to have captured that area now. To really know which is the better one to use, you need to either test or read performance and reliability reports.

Personally, I preferred that Motorola 68K line over anything Intel or AMD ever came out with.

I use AMD Opteron for my machines now. I use those because a group of engineers that designed the Dec Alpha chips put alot of what that did and wanted to do with the Alpha into the design of the 64bit Opterons.

The 64Bit Opterons seem to perform better than the Xeons.

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